Sex-specific mortality trends in adolescents and young adults with cancer from 2007 to 2016.

Abstract

1570 Background: Adolescents and young adults (AYA) aged 15-39 years make up approximately 70,000 new oncology cases in the USA. Historically, mortality from cancer has smaller incremental improvements in AYA patients when compared to children and older adults, and not much is known about current sex-specific trends. We assessed overall and sex specific AYA mortality for the last 10 years (2007-2016). Methods: Trends in age-adjusted mortality rates per 100,000 (1972-2016) were obtained from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Average annual percent changes (AAPCs) in relative survival were analyzed using NCI’s JPSurv webtool and mortality AAPCs were quantified using Joinpoint regression analysis. Results: Overall declines in mortality are similar in AYA men and women from 1972-2016, with 54% and 51% decline, respectively. In the most recent 10 years of data (2007 to 2016), combined sex AYA mortality AAPC’s declined by about 0.8% per year, slightly slower than declines in children <15 years (1.3% per year) and adults ages >40 years (1.5% per year). Among AYA males there have been 10 year AAPC mortality declines in leukemia (-1.8%), Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) (-5.1%), Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) (-4.1%) and melanoma of the skin (-3.4%). For AYA females, 10 year AAPC mortality declines occurred in leukemia (-1.9%), ovarian (-1.5%), HL (-10%), NHL (-4.9%) and melanoma (-2.8%). These declines have been offset by stable or increasing mortality rates for several common AYA cancers, including colorectal cancer (CRC) (1.1%) and bone and joint cancer (0.6%) in AYA males. AYA females have experienced mortality increases for CRC (0.6%), bone and joint cancer (0.5%) and uterine corpus cancer (2.8%). Conclusions: In general, mortality rates for both AYA men and women have declined over the past 10 years due to decreased mortality in hematologic malignancies and melanoma. Despite overall improvement, tumor categories in both AYA males and female such as CRC, bone and joint cancer, and uterine corpus cancers show increasing mortality. These diseases require specific investigations by both pediatric and adult researchers.